


Breathe under water 'til the end

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: The Roadhouse Blues [58]
Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:21:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29338971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: Meanwhile, back at the ranch.
Series: The Roadhouse Blues [58]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1069713





	Breathe under water 'til the end

It had been a remarkably pleasant day, nothing but fishing and hanging out. And the evening was just as nice, sitting by a fire that the weather was just cool enough to warrant, full from a dinner of freshly caught trout along with baked potatoes and corn on the cob bought from a farmer's market they'd passed on their way to the cabin. When the fire had been lit, there had still been daylight, so neither of them had turned on any lights, and now that night was fully upon them, the fire was providing the room's only illumination. It was very cozy.

They were each on their third beer, feeling very mellow, and Frank was thinking of saying something, though he knew it was a bad time because he knew it would kill the mood, but it was also the perfect time—maybe the only time—because he needed Dan to be feeling mellow, and possibly receptive, if he was going do this at all.

"How secure are the OCB computer files?"

Dan frowned at him. "You promised. No shop talk."

"Not shop talk, I'm just curious."

Dan was still looking at him, still frowning. "You're just suddenly curious about the security of the OCB's computer files?"

"Yeah," Frank said, "I'm just suddenly curious." And he didn't say anything else.

"Yeah, sure you are." Dan finished his beer, opened another. "You mean, how easy would it be for some outsider to hack in and get information?" His voice was a little different, a little more . . . comprehending, and he'd stopped frowning. In fact, he was almost smiling.

"No, I was wondering how easy it would be for somebody on the inside to get into the system to alter files without anyone else on the inside knowing they'd been altered."

"How high in the chain of command would this somebody be?" Dan asked.

"Well, I wasn't talking about the AG," Frank said, but his asperity lacked edge. "But high enough to have reasonable access.

"If you're thinking to bump yourself up a paygrade, don't forget who your friends are," Dan said, the smile infiltrating his voice.

"I never forget who my friends are," Frank said, and Dan nodded.

"Frank, it's not that I don't trust you," Dan said. "But you've got to admit, you've been a little . . . ."

"Borderline psychotic?" Frank suggested. "No question about it, I've been way out on the edge for a long time now. I was out of my mind for quite a while there—"

"And now you're not," Dan said. "You want to explain that to me?"

"Yeah." He was quiet for a minute, to enjoy this last bit of conflict-free time. "I saw Vince."

Dan was nodding again. "I figured. And I'm not even going to say anything about it taking you six months to tell me."

It was pretty anti-climactic, but it was still a relief to say it to somebody. And Frank did have something that he knew would produce some satisfactory surprise. But first he had a question. "How'd you know?"

"You came in from the far edge," Dan said. "I knew only one thing would have brought you in, and if Vince was dead, I'd have been told too. So he must be all right."

"He's all right," Frank agreed, and dropped the bomb. "He's living with Steelgrave."

Dan choked on his beer.

That was more like it.

When he stopped coughing, Dan stared at Frank as though he'd lost his mind—again. "You wanna run that by me again? You **are** talking about Sonny, and not—"

Frank interrupted his rational explanations. "Six months ago I got that phone call in the middle of the night, the one Lococco warned us about, only it wasn't from somebody trying to sell Vince back, it was Sonny Steelgrave, calling to give him back."

"Frank. You—" Dan took the beer bottle out of his hand, which nearly made Frank laugh. He wasn't drunk, and Dan knew he wasn't drunk. "What the hell are you talking about?"

So Frank told him, about Steelgrave's call, about their meeting at the Empire State Building, about Vince.

He didn't tell him about the postcard he'd received a few weeks ago, the one with two names and an address in San Francisco scrawled on it, written by somebody who wasn't Vince, and Frank was quite sure wasn't Steelgrave. Frank was pretty sure of the who, but not of the why, though he suspected it had something to do with Lococco telling him that that not only did he know Vince wasn't dead, Lococco knew where he was. And who. It was détente, which Frank suspected was as close as he'd ever get to friendship with Lococco, which was fine was him.

Dan didn't interrupt him, but Frank got the feeling it was because he wasn't sure whether or not to believe him and he couldn't figure out what to say. When Frank was finished—when he'd told Dan about saying goodbye to Vince for the last time—Dan handed him back his beer.

"You don't seem drunk," Dan said.

"I'm not drunk," Frank agreed quietly, not rolling his eyes.

"Or crazy," Dan agreed. "In fact, you've seemed a lot saner lately. I knew you'd heard from Vince because I knew the only thing short of a full frontal lobotomy that would have settled you down would be knowing for sure Vince was safe. I can buy that. But this story about Sonny Steelgrave—"

"It's not a story," Frank said. "It's what happened."

Dan seemed on the verge of asking him something, maybe how Steelgrave had managed to avoid the whole autopsy-embalming-burial process, or maybe just which hallucinogenic Frank was using. Instead he said, "You're sure about this? That it was him? That it wasn't—"

"That it wasn't what?" Frank asked. "Who?"

Dan opened his mouth to give an answer he didn't have, closed it, shook his head. "I don't know."

"I sat across a table from him in a restaurant in the Empire State Building. I talked to the man. I'd busted him twice before Vince ever grabbed that godforsaken assignment, and I busted him a couple more during the case, so it's not as though I'm talking about some stranger I've only seen pictures of. You want to know if I'm sure? Yes, I'm sure. And even if I'd been hallucinating, or—I don't know—where do you think Vince has been? All this time? We—Vince and I—talked about Steelgrave. You think he's crazy too?"

"All right, we'll leave that part aside for the moment."

Frank didn't argue the point. He could have, but he didn't.

"What's this got to do with hacking into the OCB computers?" Dan asked.

"I was just thinking the other day, it might be a good idea if Vince's fingerprints weren't in the system anymore, just in case somebody happened to go looking."

"Who would go looking?" Dan asked.

"You never know," Frank said. "Things happen."

"That's for damn sure," Dan agreed. "Just Vince's?" he asked.

Frank drank some of his beer, looking into the fire. He didn't want to answer that question. He didn't even want to think about it.

"Just Vince's prints?" Dan asked again.

But there was no avoiding it. Frank sighed. "No. Not just Vince's." The names had already been changed, to protect both the innocent and the guilty.

"And you might want to get rid of that tape, the one of Paul Patrice's murder," Dan said. "Just in case."

"That would be destroying evidence." Frank said.

"And you draw the line at tampering with government files?"

Frank finished his beer. "What the hell. It's not like we were mounting a prosecution anyway. Last I heard, Sonny Steelgrave was dead."

"That's what I've heard, too," Dan agreed.


End file.
